Market demand for smaller and more functional electronic devices has driven the development of semiconductor devices, including semiconductor packages, and entire systems disposed on a chip. Some electronic devices, such as cellular telephones, employ a variety of design-specific electronic components. The space available inside the electronic devices is limited, particularly as the electronic devices are made smaller. Other electronic devices, such as are employed in the automotive industry, are power devices that operate in demanding environments.
Semiconductor chips, whether provided as a package or as a stand alone chip, are fabricated on a wafer. The chips are fabricated on the wafer starting with front-end processing in a layer-by-layer manner until the chips are back-end processed to include interconnects to the outside world. The wafer could warp at any step in processing. Warped wafers limit chip yield and present many challenges during chip processing that undesirably increases the unit cost of the chips.
For these and other reasons there is a need for the present invention.